Carmelo Anthony went on a tour of sorts as a free agent this summer, and while he had said initially that winning was the priority, in the end he chose to take as much money as possible to remain with a Knicks team that finished outside of the playoff picture in the woeful Eastern Conference last season.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Players should make as much as they can in their relatively short careers, and Anthony in particular did what was expected, considering the way he forced his way to New York while still under contract in Denver back in 2011.

But if winning was the most important of his priorities, then New York wasn’t the best choice. Anthony preached patience, however, and knows that there’s virtually no chance that the Knicks are capable of winning the title in the upcoming season.

“I do not expect to win a championship this year. That’s something that takes time and everything has to be in sync, from management to players. We have much work to do, but something that drives me. I know we can start creating the foundation of what we do. It’s the start of a good process, “said Anthony. “Next year we will have enough money to spend within the salary cap. But this year it is important to take the necessary steps towards those who will in the next year. I want to concentrate on building what we want from this year. “

Anytime you’re translating interviews from a foreign language it’s good to proceed with caution. But assuming what was printed was accurate, it speaks to Anthony’s bigger picture goals.

He’s always wanted to be the best player on a team in one of the biggest of the league’s markets, and in this current incarnation of the Knicks, he is exactly that. It’s not a bad thing, of course, because Anthony has provided plenty of exciting moments in his time with the team, and New York (like Los Angeles) is a market that needs a superstar player to perform on a nightly basis, even if the wins are slow to come.

But it’s fine to admit that market size and all that comes with it is the motivating factor, because winning — albeit for far less money — was much more readily guaranteed had Anthony chosen to bolt for Chicago.

Self-fulfilling prophecies include saying (or reporting) something over and over until the point where you believe it to be true.

That applies to both those who think they know how the Knicks season will go this year, and those who think that the Bulls are going anywhere as presently constructed, or thought they WERE going anywhere WITH Anthony.

Other than that, there was nowhere else to go that wasn’t at best a lateral move.

Well, gee, you sure seem to think you know how the Knicks will do this season. Whenever someone says the Knicks will struggle, you disagree, without actually supporting your opinion with facts. By the way, it’s rather obvious that the Bulls will be better than the Knicks next season. If they had landed Anthony, they may have become title favorites, but you say the Bulls would suck with him and the Knicks will be great with him? Definitely not hypocrisy…

Yep. It’s the media’s fault that Carmelo Anthony believes the Knicks won’t win the title this year.

His belief has nothing to do with the fact that they’re installing new systems on offense and defense, or the fact that $35 million of their $85 million payroll is going to two injury-prone players (Bargs and Stoudamire), or the fact that there aren’t more than 4 above-average defenders on the entire roster.

It’s just a media self-fulfilling prophecy that Carmelo has been “tricked” into believing because he doesn’t understand basketball like you do. The Knicks are completely legitimate championship contenders with Sam Dalembert as their only rim protector. Right.

Also, if Carmelo seriously thought the Knicks were just as likely to win a championship this year as the Bulls, then he would’ve immediately committed to sticking with the Knicks long term rather than seriously considering taking an enormous paycut to move to Chicago.

The ONLY reason why he would consider taking an enormous paycut to play for the Bulls is if he thought his chances of winning in the short term were better there.

The fact that Carmelo admitted he seriously considered joining the Bulls proves that Carmelo thought his chances of immediate success were better in Chicago. Stop deluding yourself.

It’s ironic that you point to the Knicks having $ tied up in 2 injury prone players for one more season. Your Bulls have a lot of $ tied up in an injury prone player in Rose. So sure Melo thinks the Bulls will likely be better than the Knicks this year provided Rose is able to get through the season without further injury. However, While he looks ok now Rose is still a big ? and will be under contract for another 4 or 5 years which was a major contributing factor in Melo’s decision. But you are deluding yourself if you think this Bull team is poised to win a Championship. This Bulls team is definitely offensively challenged even with a healthy Rose.

Mr.Wright212- The Bulls and Houston are “lateral” moves? Moves to Milwaukee and Philadelphia are lateral moves because the Knicks suck just as much as they do without Anthony. Maybe worse! At least Milwaukee and Philly have some nice young talent to build on!

Anthony basically guaranteed to play out the rest of his good productive years on the Knicks, while the Knicks probably don’t have the possibility of being good this season or the next. And this isn’t the media talking….it’s anyone that understands how bad the Knicks roster is right now.

Wait a minute? Am I writing to Mr. Dolan??? Now it’s all making sense!

It’s nice that Anthony is going to be playing where he said his heart was back in 2011. What is a shame is that he will probably be one of those guys who never wins a title, and if he does it will be with “X” stacked team when he’s in his late 30’s.

I hope Melo does go to the Cavs then… that would STOP them from winning anymore titles…

MeZero titles Anthony.

ProBasketballPundit - Aug 9, 2014 at 11:55 AM

Hey I don’t want to bum you out too much but I just read that Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson were two of the five worst rim protectors in basketball last year. So I think before they win any titles they need to find a big guy who can be at least mediocre at that.

That’s okay though. One, they’re power forwards. And since when did people care about power forwards protecting the rim? Two, Love makes up for his rim protection in other ways.

ProBasketballPundit - Aug 9, 2014 at 9:41 PM

Oh yes Kevin Love is definitely an A or A+ player. Only saying that I don’t know about the interior D on the Cavaliers… if we’re talking about 5 championships that is. The way I see it is Love is better right now than Bosh ever was. Bosh never took over games and put up a 45-19-8 type game… Love had several of those last season. I can’t wait to see it come together in Cleveland.

Oh well the 5 championships thing was just me having a laugh. Kind of.

ProBasketballPundit - Aug 10, 2014 at 10:45 AM

Nobody would be happier if they won 5 straight than me… but I’ve learned my lesson about superteams. Chemistry trumps superteams. Like honestly if you took the 2014 San Antonio Spurs and put them against the absolute best players of the other 29 teams…. i think the Spurs would blow them out.

I feel like this all started with the 2008 Celtics were thrown together and were immediately amazing. Did you know they didn’t have a losing record to any single team that year? And if Garnett stayed healthy they probably would have won back-to-back championships.

But it usually isn’t so easy. Miami got beat up by the Mavericks because they hadn’t quite figured out their roles yet. And I think Cleveland probably has a heartbreak coming for them too. I hope not but I’m expecting it. Like Mike Miller says, championship or bust is not a fun mentality. I’m going to just enjoy learning about all the new players beside LeBron.

“Like honestly if you took the 2014 San Antonio Spurs and put them against the absolute best players of the other 29 teams…. i think the Spurs would blow them out.”

Ugh. Now we have the myth of the 2014 Spurs to contend with. How about this: pit the 2014 Spurs against the 2014 Mavs and watch the Spurs lose 3 games as the Mavs take them the distance. Or pit the 2014 Spurs against the 2015 Mavs and watch the Spurs lose in 6 games.

Or this: Have the 2014 Spurs play the 2014 Heat without moving Boris Diaw into the starting lineup. The Heat probably win that series.

The Spurs are a great team and they were great for three games in the Finals, but they’re not that great. They were beaten at home by the absolute best player in the Finals, for crying out loud – so I think they’d have problems with a team of the absolute best players. But that’s just me.

That’s the great thing about this Cavs team. They should have better immediate chemistry than LeBron’s last team. For one thing, the pecking order is already established and that is exceedingly important. It took Miami an entire season to work that out. And also the pieces just seem to fit together better. I’m not excepting any chemistry issues.

Blatt is also one of the best coaches in the world by reputation so Cleveland seems to have more going for them than the Heat did.

What is all the talk about C Anthony in final or winning a championship? His presence has never had a positive effect for any TEAM he played for.
Oh, excuse me, Melo only plays for Melo, not for any TEAM. Not likely will he ever see action beyond the first round on those few times he gets to the playoffs at all.

Anthony is a clown and a loser. Period. This guy actually said in an interview that he “doesn’t care about the money.” And this was right after he’d just signed a $124 M contract when he could have signed with the Bulls and made them a contender. And he’s also an idiot. In 2011 he forced his way to NY and by doing so he forced them to gut their roster in order to get him. Why didn’t he wait until free agency when he could have simply signed there? MONEY! An extension w/ NY would have given him more money than simply signing as a free agent.

The Knicks aren’t winning a championship this year or next year or the year after that. Nobody cares if they’ll have cap space because, who are they signing in 2015? Nobody who could even get them to the ECF; that’s for certain. They will never get past the Bulls or Cavs and even if they do, so what? Who is Melo beating in the West? OKC? LAC?

I give Melo a break because he’s never been surrounded by guys who know anything about winning. He was with Team USA, where he was absolutely outstanding (like Love) – but on his own teams, surrounded by clowns and pretenders either on the court, on the bench or in the front office, of course he’s going to struggle.

Now, George Karl… he’s never won anything either so don’t go there.

This is why I think Melo made such a great decision to stay with Phil Jackson. It’s what he needed to do and shows that he has his priorities in order.

bkbell3 - Aug 9, 2014 at 6:21 AM

Who exactly did the knicks gut? Felton got traded to portland for miller and ended up back with knicks and miller went to the wiz. Chandler went to china then came back at the end of the year and has been hurt off and on. Galinari who was hurt most of the time with the knicks has missed almost 2 years with injuries in denver. Mozgof never got off the bench till this year when they traded their starting center and their new center got hurt and missed most of the year. Galinari played the same position as melo so in the end they only gave up a first round pick. Also melo was coming to play with a then healthy statt who was killing it the year before melo got there and no one knew statt would implode.

Until the last sentence, I thought you understood the Knicks problem wasn’t about who wasn’t there or who was hurt. The problem was that ‘Melo WAS there, making sure no one else was going to get any glory.

joeypeepee - Aug 10, 2014 at 9:29 PM

Every word you write, it becomes more and more obvious that you are clueless about the NBA and probably sports in general. Maybe you think the average superstar athlete takes $50M pay cuts on a regular basis to pick up and leave town and roll the dice in a totally new situation, where NOTHING is guaranteed. Especially a one Derrick Rose and his future. Maybe you’ve never heard of Phil Jackson, a guy that probably knows more about winning titles than anyone. Hard to turn down 124M plus Jackson plus staying put in the only city you ever wanted to play for. But yeah, call him names because that’s what people that know what they’re talking about do to make their points.

Obviously you don’t know anything about what I believe. I’ve been the main one here arguing that the Black Mamba should have squeezed every copper penny out of LA. I don’t begrudge Anthony taking the money. Everybody wants to get paid, especially since the NBA owners have been artificially deflating player salaries/market value via that fraud CBA. What I don’t like is for somebody to play me for a fool. When Anthony says he “doesn’t care about the money” and that his first priority is “winning” then he’s clearly lying. If he cared about winning he’d be in Chicago instead of NY, which has no chance of winning anything in the next 2-3 years at least. At every opportunity that he’s been given to show that he values winning of money, he’s chosen money. Sometimes even at the cost of making his team worse, just like the Denver to NY trade fiasco.

Phil Jackson was one of the best coaches of the last 25 years, but as a GM he is a rookie.

joeypeepee - Aug 10, 2014 at 9:32 PM

@zoomy -Every word you write, it becomes more and more obvious that you are clueless about the NBA and probably sports in general. Maybe you think the average superstar athlete takes $50M pay cuts on a regular basis to pick up and leave town and roll the dice in a totally new situation, where NOTHING is guaranteed. Especially a one Derrick Rose and his future. Maybe you’ve never heard of Phil Jackson, a guy that probably knows more about winning titles than anyone. Hard to turn down 124M plus Jackson plus staying put in the only city you ever wanted to play for. But yeah, call him names because that’s what people that know what they’re talking about do to make their points.

So Anthony will just be playing for stats. Melo first year of this new deal is to keep fans coning to msg. With Love gone who is the big coming to NY to help Melo. The Knicks will overpay for Marc gasol and still not be anywhere near Cleveland or Chicago. Its sad being a Knicks fan

Carmelo staying with the Knicks isn’t about winning a championship in 2015. It’s about him trusting Phil Jackson to use their enormous cap space starting in the 2015 offseason to build a high quality team around him. He seriously considered taking an enormous paycut to leave for one reason and one reason only – because he knew the Knicks weren’t winning a championship without additional help.

If he thought the Knicks could win a championship right away this year, he wouldn’t have taken so long to re-commit to the Knicks. It would’ve been an extremely easy decision to stay.

@eventhorizon04 – All the cap space in the world isn’t going to help if free agents don’t want to go there. Granted that may change with Phil Jackson on board, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like anyone wants to go there. That silence you hear from players talking about New York as a potential destination is ominous. There’s a lot of other places that are much more attractive to free agents right now with rosters that have possibilities or living situations where their money isn’t taxed by the state (see Miami and Texas teams), or LA with the endorsement and commercial possibilities. Warmer weather..etc. New York just isn’t a pull right now, and I suspect they won’t be until they have a half decent roster of younger players.

Mezero titles, stockton and malone played with much more talent then melo, charles barkley played on 2 teams with more talent than melo- no titles, Dominic wilkins played with more talent-no titles. Durant and westbrook played with more talent-no titles.KD had more talent on some of his minn. teams and had to team up with 2 hall of famers to win one title. jordon no titles till got pipen and a host of great role players and hall of famers.Cris paul and griffin played with more talent-no titles. Mark gasal and zack randolf played with more talent-no titles. Jason kidd and dirk played with more talent and had to team up to win one title. etc. etc. etc. moses malone and the doc had to team up to win a title.

You don’t have to read into everything. Take his statement at face value and it’s admirable. Of course he wanted money but is it so wrong to get paid what you’re worth? I believe that he believes in Phil Jackson’s ability to build a contender and I admire his willingness to see it out.

@PBT – By the time Phil Jackson could make this team a contender, Melo will probably be 32-33. The Knicks lack way too much on this roster, and to fill 14 roster spots with talent takes time.

Let me say that I have no doubt that if Dolan doesn’t interfere, PJ is going to make this a good team. I just don’t think this is going to happen in Melo’s prime years. 3 years minimum the way I see it if not more.

What I find funny in some of these comments are the geniuses who keep trying to convince themselves that the Bulls were somehow the “obvious” choice if winning was the most important thing to him.

Two years ago, the Bulls WITH a 100% healthy Derrick Rose was ousted in 6 by the Heat largely because of their inability to score.

Today…

Derrick Rose is the owner of bad knees & 3 more years left on his contract.

There is constant rumblings of drama between Rose & the ownership (the same ownership that broke up MJ’s Bulls).

The head coach (albeit a great one) is now notoriously known for running his players into the ground (Melo lead the league in MPG last year at the age of 30).

Honestly, would anyone be shocked if 20 games into the season Rose had more knee complications & was forced to miss significant time again? Melo just lived through that nightmare with Amare Stoudamire. For the past two summers Amare has always “felt great”…then the season started.

Really, asking Melo to leave $50 on the table was insult to injury. Ask Dwight Howard how great of an idea it is to leave that kinda money on the table to join a team that will “win now”. Dwight’s new team played basketball ONE week longer than the Lakers did.

The Pacers were supposed to dethrone the Heat last season…they didn’t.

There’s a reason why they play the games. The fact of the matter is there are ZERO guarantees in sports. It would be stupid to make a 3-5 year decision based on only what COULD happen next year. NONE of you would make that choice in your own profession. He signed a 5 year deal & his decision was based on what can be accomplished over the course of those entire 5 years…not just next year.

The Knicks suck. Everyone knows it. Carmelo is one of the top players in the game. Being a Knick fan is almost as pathetic as being a Jets fan. That’s not hate: that’s reality. Ain’t no time to hate: I pity the Knicks and their arrogant fan base.

@cruzan80 – Predictions of various people aren’t what is important to this conversation. The fact is that Carmelo would have been better off in Chicago. Chicago even without Rose has a significantly better roster and has still made the playoffs every year as a top 4 seed. Add the possibility of a healthy Rose, and it’s not even close.

There are only two reason Melo would stay in NYC. Money and family. The Knicks as an organization is a mess (notwithstanding Phil Jackson). The only upside this organization has is Phil, and if Dolan interferes, you can bet things will go even farther south very quickly.

May want to get your facts in order before u post. Derrick rose was out the last 2 years. Therefore, they were knocked out in the 2011 playoffs. The roster has changed a little bit since then. I do agree there is no guarantee to win. However, he has absolutely no chance this year to win anything but a playoff berth.

You are a hater. Everyone knows it. You’re one of the top haters in the game. Being a hater is almost as pathetic as being a troll. That’s not hate: that’s reality. Ain’t no time to hate: I pity the trolls and their ignorant comments.

So multiple MICRO-Fracture Knee surgeries is the equivalent to a torn meniscus….by you’re logic Paul George’s career is over…I do t get why Rose is still hated on…he’s not the 1st injured player….why cuz he had two unlucky injuries???…..two that you’re comparing too AMARE ….I’ve even seen Brandon Roy comparisons…again how….completely different injuries…he’s 26 and y’all just got a lil taste these last few weeks…jealous much????….if be jealous too if the best I can do in the last 20 years is Derek Harper…

What makes Carmelo more of a liar is he said that winning is the most important. I have money and I’m going to keep making money. Those are his words. And now he says that he doesn’t expect to win a championship next year? I guess winning wasn’t that important as him getting paid. I glad Rose didn’t want that loser. Winning isn’t a priorty to Melo. Never was. And knick fans needs to stop it with the Derrick Rose knee jokes. And prepare to see him run all over those sorry azz knicks. And stop hoping for Rose to get hurt. It might happen to melo. Did you ever think about that?

Okay Bulls fans, pat yourselves on the back. You had a better chance to win a title with Melo than the Knicks. We get it already. Now it’s academic. He’s not going there so unless Rose miraculously returns to his old form the Bulls don’t have a shot at winning the title either.